Does a Sundance sale translate into a hefty payday for a film’s makers? Not necessarily, if last year’s films are any guide. There was no $140-million-grossing Blair Witch Project in the 2000 crop. In fact, the low-budget The Tao of Steve was the box-office winner, with a $4.3-million gross. (At the end of November, though, the similarly low-budget You Can Count on Me had cleared $1 million in only three weeks of release and looked to top that.) And only four other films of the 32 U.S. fiction features in the Competition and American Spectrum sections even passed the $1-million mark. Three — Groove, Urbania and Chuck & Buck — did so just barely, while Girlfight topped out at $1.5 million. Several of the crop’s most critically acclaimed features, such as Spring Forward and Our Song, never found a match among established distribution companies; both are being released by their financier, the Independent Film Channel, under its new distribution arm. Lisa Krueger’s debut feature, Committed, was another Dramatic Competition disappointment. Miramax produced the film, a romantic comedy starring Heather Graham, but pulled the plug 10 days after an April 28 opening weekend that barely cleared $11,000 on six screens. The documentary competition added The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a Lions Gate fest buy, to the million-dollar club. The only other Sundance doc performing anywhere near that range was Fine Line’s Sex Pistols bio, The Filth and the Fury, at $606,000. Dark Days will clear upward of $300,000, and The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack squeaked past $200,000. And that’s it for docs with staying power.

The big box-office winners in the 17-film Premiere section were New Line’s Love and Basketball ($27 million) and Boiler Room ($16 million), with Lions Gate’s American Psycho a close third at $15 million. Paramount Classics squeezed $4.8 million out of The Virgin Suicides after buying it at Cannes in 1999, and Lions Gate eked $3.1 million out of The Big Kahuna, a 1999 Toronto buy. Two more films made by studios, Miramax’s Hamlet and Sony’s Broken Hearts Club, made $1.5 million each. Disappointments in the Premieres section included USA’s Joe Gould’s Secret at $641,000, Fine Line’s Waking the Dead at $327,400 and Sony Classics’s Trixie at $291,000.

How will the 2000 performance affect buying trends at Sundance this year? Don’t count on the kind of bidding wars conducted in recent years for films such as Girlfight and Happy, Texas, both disappointments at the box office. Remember, Miramax has for all intents and purposes quit trolling indie waters, USA faces an uncertain future, and Fox Searchlight has apparently regrouped in favor of producing the majority of its releases. Warner Classics, anyone? Rumors are that Sundance chief Geoffrey Gilmore may assume the leadership of the new division after wrapping the 2001 fest.

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